Both Sides
By Rev. Nina D. Grey
September, 2000
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Both Sides |
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"Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul
can go it alone."
-- Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
Is the spiritual life what "we do in our solitariness" or what we are together? Either alone or with others, we are capable of frittered, soulless living, but in both cases we are also able to go high and deep in thought and feeling. There can be an interplay, a conversation, a movement between our aloneness and our life in community.
We can be by ourselves with our questions, our reflections, our reveries and insights. Then we can come together and offer to another or others the struggles we encounter and the depths we reach in our inner lives. We can move back and forth between the inner and outer life. Enlivened both by the inner life and by the gifts we give of ourselves to each other in community, we are strengthened for responding to the needs of our living world. We can bring our combined wisdom to the healing of what is broken.
This summer I went to a special place which nurtures my spirit, Ferry Beach and the coast of Maine. I spent time in thought and reverie, reading beloved books and the beauty of the coastline and the birds which live there. I had quiet time by sand and water. Interpersed with this alone time, I visited with old friends and family and even made new acquaintances, some which may become friendships over time. I let my heart, mind and spirit be open.
I also spent time learning with colleagues, UU ministers from all over the continent. Too, I visited the grave of Quillen Shinn, buried in an old Portland cemetery, the Evergreen. At Ferry Beach we sing about Quillen Shinn in our after-dinner songfest. He was a great visionary and spread the good news of Universalism. He founded Ferry Beach as a Universalist summer camp. Through these experiences I remembered that ours is a faith of deep root, of wide reach, and of wings for soaring. These experiences, too, touched my mind, my heart, and spirit.
So now. I, a solitary soul like each one of us, one person, apparently separate
(it's an illusion, of course), follow the silky thread of memory and hope back to you, my home and faithful community, that we may be together again, companions in this journey of learning, loving and changing. And let us together remember that our apparent separateness as one unique faith community is also a bit of an illusion. For we dwell in a city with five other UU congregations, in a continent with 1,000+ UU congregations. Let there be a flow back and forth between our life as a unique Hyde Park UU church, with our special gifts, and our interweaving with other UU communities with whom we can learn, love and change. Let us take hope and courage in the promise of First Unitarian Church, with its particular wonder and potential, and also in the knowledge that we are not alone.
Come! Join in our All Generational Water Ceremony of Ingathering, September 10, 2000. Welcome our new Minister for Religious Education, the Rev. Marlene Walker, and welcome yourselves and each other!
In love and faith
Nina